Analysis · Education
Credibility Badges Helped People Do More Than Doubt False Posts
By AWEI · AI-compiled · Published · Analysis prepared · 1 source · doi.org
Making people distrust false claims is only part of the test: do they still recognize true ones? In a study published in 2024, Toby Prike, Lucy H. Butler and Ullrich K. H. Ecker found that credibility badges improved this distinction in a simulated social network. Participants believed false claims less and true claims more.
The experiment analyzed 415 U.S. adults recruited through Prolific. They encountered 80 posts, half true and half false, and could like, share, flag or skip each while trying to gain followers. Every post included comments accurately correcting or affirming its claim. Afterward, participants rated the previously encountered claims in plain text, without the social media features.
The researchers compared four conditions combining the presence or absence of badges and a message about social expectations for accurate sharing. Badges displayed credibility scores for both sources and participants. Participants’ scores changed with their actions: sharing falsehoods tended to lower credibility, even though it could increase their simulated following.
To distinguish better judgment from blanket skepticism, the researchers examined belief ratings across multiple thresholds for accepting a claim as true. They compared how often true claims passed each threshold with how often false claims did. Both interventions improved discrimination. Badges also reduced sharing of false posts; the social message’s effects on engagement were less consistent across analyses.
The experiment tested a package, however. Source ratings and feedback on participants’ own credibility appeared together, so their separate contributions remain unresolved. Reputation concerns and increased attention to accuracy are possible explanations, not established mechanisms. Nor did the study establish lasting improvements on actual platforms.
The useful standard for evaluating a credibility tool is therefore two-sided: does it help people reject falsehoods while retaining accurate beliefs? This experiment met that standard under unusually supportive conditions, with accurate checks available for every claim. It leaves open how well the approach works when those checks are missing.
Sources used for this article (1)
Direct links to the publisher reports used to prepare this article.
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- Source-credibility information and social norms improve truth discernment and reduce engagement with misinformation online Toby Prike, Lucy Butler, Ullrich K. H. Ecker
